Sasuke is sick, but he denies it
by TheAcupuncturist
Summary: "Sasuke wonders, thinks, tries to remember when exactly was that he started feeling this." BDSM mentions, Dom/sub love relationship. There's a disease in the Uchiha's blood.


**M for a reason. ****Canon-divergence, not AU.**

**Mentions of BDSM, pegging, dom/sub, and generally unwholesome feelings the way only an Uchiha can pull off.**

**I seriously don't know where this came from, but what can be done now.**

**Enjoy.**

* * *

Sasuke wonders, thinks, tries to remember when exactly was that he started feeling this.

A dull ache, a remnant of a hit, the tautness of burnt flesh he knows very well from pouring flames out of his lips, from playing with lightning under his fingertips.

He really pushes his mind, and suddenly he is thinking of red and white and pink and green.

Vaguely, he remembers the feeling of tingling amidst his ribs, this as his memory paints two columns of ivory at the sides of his head, the taste of heat —not quite sweet, not quite salty— at the tip of his tongue, the smell of arousal and sweat and sterilization. He can recall perfectly how, as she clutched his hair —so tight it hurt, and somehow the pain traveling down his spine became liquid fire in his blood—, as her body trembled with such violence and sound broke in her throat, he realized about the foreign sensation.

It fades, eventually, when he takes solo S-rank missions. The graceful sway of his katana, the strain in his eyes, soreness of pulled, abused muscles, function like an antidote for that rather annoying sting.

Relief lasts only so little, and he swears under gritted teeth when it appears again while he crosses the gigantic gates surrounding the village.

This disease —he convinces himself it's something his clan bears as a genetic trait he didn't have enough time to know when the massacre happened —that until now felt like embers, is now resembling more like a low flame, beating and throbbing and _alive_. He frowns because he doesn't like it, he doesn't grows accustomed to it like with silence, steadily aching and synched to his heartbeat.

Anger is a feeling too easy to return to, it scorches everything to ashes, and washes every trace of uncertainty under waves of black, static emptiness.

* * *

It reaches a peak, his anger, when she finds him at the training grounds, and the seething emotion deep inside his chest manages to swallow the strange perception of an off-timed beat of his cardiac muscles. He yells, noticing too late that maybe he only wanted to throw up the weird parasite living inside, to spit out whatever that was, instead of spiting his wrath onto her. The sound becomes fire, and flames run hastily, destructive, engulfing. His mind is racing, something so foreign in him during battle, the lack of self-control making his flames burn hotter, brighter. They fight what feels like hours, the rush too aggravatingly akin to his memory of her body pressed against his own, and despite his effort to avoid the thought, to push it into a black hole he had created in his consciousness, it always comes back and carries along the catalyst that magnifies his ache.

He sees it; black leather coming fast, and he knows he's got enough time to dodge, to counter, to _stab her_ before it reaches, it's going directly to his sternum, then a spark comes to life in his brain, and he lets her punch him right in the chest.

With luck, this is what it would take to kill the thing.

Mismatched eyes are fixed on the sky above, broken bones hurting, bleeding, a much more familiar sensation filling him after the fight. Adrenaline is high in his system, pupils dilated due to fight-or-flee response, muscles still quivering to keep going. Then he's no longer seeing blue, but green.

It ranges in lots of hues, a palette of tonalities he can discern easily with such privileged eyes; intensity, saturation, the fluctuation of tone as her chakra knits the shards of his ribs, the sprains and tears of soft tissue, the sharp edge of emerald when she observes his bloodied face and narrows her eyes.

He expects the colour to be full of anger, of hate, anything he would most likely be portraying. Instead he finds exhaustion, wariness, comprehension too worn out to be kind anymore. There's also a blaze of something he doesn't recognize, and it shines so fiercely he can't help but stare back. So mesmerizing he barely feels the sharp pain of muscle instigated to repair itself, nor does he hear the snap as she sets his bones in place again.

They _stare, _then there's no green, but pink, quickly, _feverishly_ becoming _red_. He does not see the colours, _he feels them. _She tastes like ash, like blood from a split lip, and he's not sure if a kiss should resemble this much to _fury_, to _thunderstorm. _He bites back, he grasps, he takes from her, because he doesn't know any other way. And she tears something from him he wasn't sure of having until now.

His chest hurts, and it's so different from fractures, he can't help but notice it.

Yet something has changed.

He knows as he's thrusting into her, as she's building her pleasure using his body, that this disease might never go away. A fever burning now in his bone marrow, reaching places he didn't want it to, and what once was a dull sting is now a searing wound bleeding inside his chest.

He suspects being so close to his medic is actually making the parasite grow stronger.

So he distances, finds more missions, goes away.

But this time, no matter how many limbs he cuts, no matter how much intel he burns his brain to decipher, no matter how cold he feels during snowstorms, the fever is not leaving, not receding.

It's relentless, steady, harrying. It grips him viciously, and he compares the feeling with the one of her hands pinning him down. The thought feeds it, an urge coiling in his abdomen, so he considers that maybe fighting it is only making it worse, sensing his weakness and drinking from it; he discards the idea when the assumption of vulnerability reaches him. His pride is hot iron when he tries to cling to it, but he does it anyway.

* * *

There's sweat running down his body, he questions how is it that he ended up here again, pride turned to sand in his mouth. Answers are hard to grasp when her fingers are deep inside him, touching ever so gently, so tender they almost hurt. His mind tells him to stay still, to keep his composure, his body a traitor with other plans; he squirms, he tries to lean back searching for more friction, and she gives only one sound of warning and the halt of her fingers aches briefly more than his chest.

There's only heat, only fever, and just like the stabbing pain of the Mangekyō, he adapts to it.

Her chakra dances cold inside him, a string that licks, teases, and he _must stay still._ He breathes hard against the pillow, trying to stop the urge to yank at his restrictions, but he knows better. So he regulates his heartbeat —as much as he can manage—, he steels his instincts until they're not that loud and attention-deprived, and he's barely grazing that bit of control he had lost when she had pinned him when he feels it.

There's whiplash —so sudden, so intense— it whites out his mind. He has to bite down the soft fabric to cushion his scream, and he can feel every muscle of his body curling and tensing. His spine pulsates as if struck by lightning, all nerves ignited in compelled synapses. Slowly, almost painfully, the sensation diminishes, leaving him trembling, gasping. A trace of ire hatches from the denied orgasm, yet he lets it die as soon as it wakes.

He can _feel_ her smile, a pleased sound escaping her lips from behind him; this, he notices, makes his solar plexus tickle. It is not like the usual throb, and to his surprise, he reckons it far more pleasant. He finds himself longing to feel it again, to _hear her_ once more.

"Please," he says, voice hoarse from abused vocal strings.

She laughs, and it's light, tempered, just a touch too raspy, too out of breath. The tingling irradiates from his sternum, travels through every cell of his body.

When his brain manages to pull itself together —at least enough to make his body move—, he turns. His mismatched eyes find hers; bright, amused, _far too lucid_. But his keen sight does not fail to see the aching tenderness as well, the sad flicker so embedded to her perception of him.

It hurts him too, but he doesn't accept it.

* * *

The word "love" pops in his head suddenly, when they lay still side by side, shivers and huffs yet possessing their bodies, sweat still drying on their skins.

She had fucked him senseless once using a strap-on, and rode him —after he had recovered with a bit of chakra-infused help— until he felt he wouldn't be able to bear it anymore. And amidst her heat and his, between the broken vocalizations of pleasure and names, it comes to him that maybe, just maybe, he's beginning to understand.

Recognition aches, much more than his sore muscles, than his overused manhood, but it's different, this time it brings along a soothing beat, and where it used to pinch when he breathed too deep, it now makes his lungs a little handicapped to fill completely —a situation that's not as bothering to him as it sounds.

He stares at her, his pupils travel through all the lines of her face, her neck, her hair, his Sharingan had faded long ago without him realizing among the waves of his second orgasm. He stares and stares until she shifts to face him, one hand hidden under the pillow, the other one resting lazily centimeters from her navel.

Though exhausted, his heart speed up its beats, a shiver crawls in his spine. He feels it; the way blood reaches his ears, painting the space between his collarbones with bright red. He doesn't know why, and uncertainty always discomforts him.

She must notice, because her arm is now under his neck, the other around his back, tugging him with such softness it disturbs him, until his face is pressed against the space amidst her breasts, the steady, strong beat of her heart easing his own. He breathes deep, and finds his lungs cooperating to his command when they were so reluctant to do so before. He holds onto her shoulder from behind, a little too needy, too shaky, and she clutches a bit harder.

* * *

Blood is dripping from her broken nose, from her busted lip, shinobi clothes are ripped and so is her flesh. Emerald scintillates as she scans him, yet her knuckles remain white beneath the crimson staining them.

Violence is so familiar he recognizes it the minute he sees it in her eyes.

He knows every edge of it, has been cut several times getting to know it so masterfully he even acquired a taste for its pointy ends.

Instinct shifts restless inside of his body, reveling in the way adrenaline pours itself in his bloodstream, in how it makes his mind this sharp. He approaches, step by step, mismatched eyes watching so intently, until he reaches her. She does not attack, though he can discern the idea in the spark of her gaze. He hugs her, the movement so strange and rusty he can only picture it as a poor attempt.

Yet she lets him, and even if her breath catches and her heart pounds so hard he can feel it in his own chest, she seems to relax after some minutes.

Invisible to her, his frown loosens, and their bodies mold to each other when they hug tighter.

This violent thing burning inside is getting less ravaging, less cruel, though not less vivid, he notices.

* * *

Screaming, he wakes up to the image of scalpels, syringes and operating tables, and yellow, slit-pupiled eyes.

There is something warm and beating under his hand, around his wrist. His frenzied eyes focus again as epinephrine stops rushing, and all he sees is green.

He feels how her chakra circulates beneath his fingers, protecting her arteries, her trachea. Her grip is loose on his articulation, and instead of calming him, it concerns him.

Several minutes pass, and they only stare.

She moves, gingerly but firm, and with a soft twist of her wrist she makes his arm bend, her other palm pressed to his chest to stop his fall. His chakra flares, but he doesn't recoil, his eyes hurting from using his Dōjutsu. Her breath caresses his face, one thumb drawing circles over one of his scapulae, his eyelids closing to the feeling of her calloused finger on his skin. The strain of his optical nerves stops, and the tension of his sinews eases under her touch.

His brain warns him of the change, of the sudden loss of tautness in his sternum; there's no dull ache now, the feel of bruised muscle now more similar to a flutter.

The transformation leaves him disquieted, hesitant. He had an acute certainty that, whatever this tingling might be, would always remain as searing as it was before. He had embraced this conviction since pain was a sensation that brought an unwholesome temperance to his mind, mechanism he developed with years of its constant presence.

Right now, it feels caring, so tender he almost believes that she truly worries for him —stupid to think that after everything that happened, that _he had done_—, but he's too exhausted, too tired of clinging to his self-pity, to his so famished ego.

So he just breathes her, and lets her wipe his cheeks with those gentle, rough thumbs. He lets the feeling of being loved —even though it's a lie— claw on his heart and settle there.

Only one night, he promises.

* * *

He's kissing her neck, her collarbones, the sensitive skin in her elbow-pits. The taste of her intoxicates him, numbs him, the salt of sweat making him thirstier. He listens to her hard breathing, to her gasps, but he focuses on her heartbeat.

His hand travels on her anatomy, his knees to the sides of her hips, everything he can grasp, he does. He wants to make sure that he didn't miss the birthmark on her side, or the sword scar aside her navel, or the jagged mark across her sternum, or the freckles on her shoulders. He's got to make sure they won't disappear under his touch, that she isn't an illusion ready to melt into a pool of blood beneath his fingers.

The air is different when he inhales, less sharp, less coercive, and he isn't as disturbed at the change as with the others that had become evident.

She waits as he contemplates, as he seems to brand everything with hot iron in his memory, and the spark of feverish obsession has her cradling his face to make him look up. Mismatched irides stop moving eventually, and focus on emerald. He feels adrenaline sparkling to life; it's not the usual panicked feeling that comes along, but a certainty that stops his mind from racing through thoughts of red iron and black steel.

He leans, ear pressed on her chest, and stays there.

She's here, he convinces himself, she's here and his dread fades away with every beat. He swallows, breathes once, twice, his lips already on her body again.

She gasps when he bites, and the sound is _too real, too clear._

So he does it again, and again, leaving bruises in her white skin, teeth digging enough to mark, hardly away from tearing.

Her hands are ruthless when she grips, fingers well delineated in his own flesh, but she is not pushing him away.

She's pulling him closer.

And he realizes he doesn't want her to ever loose her hold.

* * *

He knows she's angry, but he lets her anyway.

His core burns from clenching muscles, the aching need of release twists and claws but _she won't let him._

After arriving to the village he had collapsed, mauled and barely standing up. When he woke up he was already at the hospital, blinking, disoriented, severely drugged. He only noticed her hand when he tried to move, gripping tightly but not enough to hurt. She was asleep, still her eyebrows were knitted together.

He felt like shit, in pain and hazy.

But the warmness of her palm radiated slowly but steadily all over his body, the distinctive cool of her chakra washing all over him, soothing his agony. He's not certain, but he's almost sure the monitor had caught the few extrasystoles his heart gave.

She avoided him for almost four weeks, until tonight.

He had yielded so easily, he recalls, but instead of feeling weak, _wrong, _he felt…_safe._

Perhaps an adjective not so accurate in the strict sense of the word.

He perceives how the rope is denting his wrist, how his sweat has damped the sheets, his veins and arteries pumping feverish blood.

He can't see, his sight blocked by a blindfold, and this, this she knows it annoys him the most.

It's one of his limits, reserved only for when he has pushed too much, or he asks for it.

The heat of her body disappears from behind, and he braces himself for whatever she's planning. He feels her hand ghosting over his hair, and skin bristles at the contact, thinking that at any moment she will yank to expose his neck and enter him in one thrust.

Confusion washes over him when he hears a change on her breathing, shallower, harsher. Her fingers undo the knot, and the fabric falls from his eyes. He's about to turn when he notices warm drops hitting his nape. She doesn't sob, her face nudging his hair, and he remains _still_. Her arms wrap around him to hold him tight, strong enough to impede a deep breath, she's hugging him and his mind is racing, faster and faster.

There's something here that is intangible, yet so clear.

A point of no return.

He has the certainty that, right now, he possesses the power to undo everything.

The feeling strikes him, gets him power-drunk, and a trace of forgotten need of destroying things lashes out in his mind.

He's breathing too hard now, sweat falls from his nose, from his chin, his heart pounds thunderous in his ears. Then the sharp pain in his eyes yanks him back to reality, and he knows.

This…

This, he doesn't want to ruin.

So instead of vanishing away, he says her name, once, twice, thrice until she shifts ever so slightly in response. He frees himself from his bindings, working his way around until his back is flat on the mattress, and her body on top of his. Her nose grazes the skin above his carotid as she breathes, her right fingers lost between strands of black. His sole hand is firmly closed on her shoulder, keeping her against him, afraid —he acquiesces— of letting go.

Yet, it's not enough.

So he tells her, whispers, that he _won't let go_.

His throat tightens when he feels her tense, and he finds himself hesitant of moving his eyes down.

But he's no longer a _coward_.

Mismatched irides meet emerald ones, and he can read in them that she _understands, _that she _knows this._

She kisses him then. He can taste in her lips, in her tongue, that she feels this same ache deep inside, that she has carried the feeling way before he ever had.

_This is how love hurts._

_This is how love burns._

_This is how love feels._

Flames as destructive as the black fire of Amaterasu, but tamed into something he can bear, into something neither sharp nor hot enough to hurt too much.

Something he can finally give her without the fear of harming her.

Because he now knows that she is not _weak, _she is not _fragile._

* * *

They make love, it's not the first time they have.

Still, it feels different.

They are too careful, too gentle, too scared.

It's slow, yet it has a desperate aftertaste, every thrust and contact hiding an underlying fear.

They tremble, they gasp, they come undone at par, and both feel whole the same as broken.

* * *

Every time he comes back, she welcomes him.

Every time he comes back and she's away in a mission, something in his chest twists like a knife, but he can take it.

When she returns, the pain changes, transforms itself, turns into an urge to feel her, to taste her, to verify with hurried fingers those marks in her skin that reassure him she _is real_. Still, his self-control prevents him from doing so, so he settles for whatever she's giving.

He can get to compare, because they both visit their their best friend. He gets to observe the gentle flicker of affection the Uzumakis portray when they look at each other.

It's nothing alike of what he sees in the emerald eyes, and bets it's the same she regards in his mismatched irides.

The shades of green blaze much brighter, much fiercer, more _violent_.

He has learned now how to discern some things from them, like when she's content, when she's had a good or bad day at the hospital, if a mission went well or wrong, if she plans of fucking him senseless, or if she wants _him_ to fuck her senseless.

Sometimes he fails at reading them, this has cost him some broken bones during a sparring, or the lack of mental preparation to get pinned down so hard, but it also has surprised him when she laughs —so bright, _so real_— at something he has said, or when she hugs him when he thinks she's going to shove him through a wall.

All is too unpredictable at times, but he doesn't dislike it.

This disease the Uchihas call love…

He has learned that it's not that terrible of a curse.

* * *

**Take a minute to tell me what you think, or if you mind grammar or spelling mistakes, please.**

**SS is so messed up and I had to elaborate on it, I don't think Sasuke is capable of developing feeling that are... normal(?). Nor anyone who gets involved with him, but that's just my opinion.**

**I am still thinking in how to name this, so the title might change.**

**Leave a review for this famished soul, if you're so kind.**


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